Well, we’re up there one evening looking to do some work, and we’re at this traffic light, and a group of people is crossing the street, and a couple of them are starting to take a close look at us. They’re looking at our car and looking at us. All of a sudden, this one woman raises her arm, points at us, and starts screaming, “ Goniffs, goniffs!.hey’re the goniffs!. Then others start to point and yell, “ Goyim, the goyim!.t’s the goyim!.he goyim.re here!”
They knew we didn’t belong there and probably figured we were the burglars robbing the hell out of them. You can believe we got the hell out of there real quick. They were actually chasing us down the street and yelling, “ Goniffs! Goniffs!. They knew we were thieves all right.
We wanted no parts of them. We hit the gas and got out of town.
—JIMMY DOLAN
POTTSVILLE REGISTERED ON the criminal Richter scale. It was impossible for young toughs like Junior Kripplebauer not to notice the bold headlines in all the daily newspapers, the staggering six-figure score, and the animated bar-room accounts of wild spending sprees by the participants. Just as Sputnik had captured worldwide attention and provided a wakeup call to American scientists and government leaders a few years earlier, Pottsville directed a spotlight on burglary as a good way to make big money without hurting anybody. Practically overnight, every street urchin, high school dropout, and neighborhood wannabe dreamed of getting in on the action and fashioning his own half-million-dollar heist. For many aspiring hoodlums in the city of Philadelphia, both young and old, burglary had renewed credibility as a lucrative criminal profession, and joining an established K&A crew was considered the epitome of success.
Jimmy Dolan and Chick Goodroe—even more than Kripplebauer—were representative of these new K&A Gang recruits. They grew up in the neighborhood; they had imbibed the aromatic mix of factory smoke, corner taprooms, and underworld braggadocio from infancy. They were Kensington boys.
A gregarious, rebellious youth, Dolan came from Fishtown in Kensington’s southernmost reaches and was already well acquainted with the rough-and-tumble habits of an unforgiving blue collar section of the city. “In my neighborhood,” recalls Dolan, “you wore a football helmet so you wouldn’t get sucker-punched.”
In 1956, at the age of 15, Dolan had had enough of ruler-swinging nuns, uninspiring priests, and strict parochial education. He left North Catholic High School in his sophomore year to join the Army. The military proved equally distasteful, so Dolan went AWOL. He did his “first bit” at Fort Lewis in Washington State and returned to Philadelphia a year later.
In no time at all, Dolan was running with a gang of teenagers and making a name for himself as newspapers chronicled his frequent arrests. One arrest— which resulted in a four-to 22-month sentence—saw Dolan and five of his teenage partners plead guilty to “taking $4,000” in the course of committing “41 burglaries.” Not a particularly impressive haul, if you take into consideration the effort expended and, especially, the jail time. Though still technically a juvenile, Dolan had already bought into the revolving-door criminal lifestyle, his prison sentences growing longer with each conviction.
It was while doing a six-to 15-year sentence for burglary (the sentence was eventually cut to three to 10 years) at Eastern State Penitentiary that Dolan would come in contact with the man who would teach him the nuances and art of burglary. Effie Burke was serving one of his rare prison sentences and quickly took a liking to the fun-loving Fishtown teenager housed with him on D block. Burke was 17 years older than Dolan, but he invested the time to teach the kid the ropes of prison life, how to minimize the chances of getting caught in the first place, and how to maneuver when stuck in that pain-in-the-ass labyrinth known as the criminal justice system. Burke was released first but stayed in touch with his headstrong but affable pupil.
“He told me to look him up when I got out,” says Dolan appreciatively. “He did everything for me. He provided lawyers, sent me money, and helped me get my sea legs when I got out.” After doing “four years and change on the sentence,” Dolan contacted Effie Burke and soon became a Burke protégé and K&A gang member.
“Right away,” says Dolan, “Effie buys me a wardrobe and tells me to stay dressed all the time.” He said the gang “always dressed as upstanding citizens” and even “carried briefcases” when they went to work. After a “couple of months” of watching, listening, and learning, Dolan was allowed to go on his “first job with Effie” and the other crew members—on that occasion Jackie Johnson, Michael Leo Andrews, and Bobby Schneeman. Whether or not he realized it at the time, Jimmy Dolan was being broken in by one of the top Kensington crews.
Most of Effie’s guys had begun their criminal careers in the early fifties and, like young Dolan, had allowed their inexperience, general ineptitude, and unbridled enthusiasm to get the better of them. They pursued dubious schemes that usually resulted in arrest and embarrassment. Michael Leo Andrews, for example, was once caught stealing “36 pairs of women’s shoes valued at $70.96,” which did little to improve his street reputation and generated negative publicity, legal fees, and jail time. However, once Andrews and the other Kensington wannabes were introduced to Willie Sears, Effie Burke, Jimmy Laverty, Hughie Breslin, and the nuts and bolts of production work, their decision-making skills improved and their thievery grew more sophisticated. Almost immediately the scores became larger and there were more of them. And the odds of arrest and imprisonment diminished considerably.
Now, with Effie Burke’s help, Dolan too would jump from the minor leagues to the majors. It was if Casey Stengel had just snatched a promising but wet-behind-the-ears rookie off a struggling farm team and placed him in the lineup alongside DiMaggio, Mantle, Berra, and Whitey Ford. Jimmy Dolan was now in the big time.
“I didn’t have any track record to speak of. I was a young kid,” he says, “but Effie knew how to pick guys. He knew what he was looking for. He’d watch you for a long time to see if you measured up. You didn’t know it, but he was grading you, seeing if you were worthy. Nobody ever went bad in Effie’s crew. He just had a knack of knowing what to do and who to pick. There was no room for mistakes in what we were doing. Effie would blow up at you if he saw you make a mistake. He told us all the time, burglary was a dangerous business, and if you screw up you could get hurt bad or, even worse, get one of your partners hurt. He drilled it into us. He didn’t want to hear about stickups, drugs, or other criminal schemes. If there was an argument about something in the crew, he would overrule all of us. Effie said the biggest reason guys make mistakes is because they believe they know it all. They get lackadaisical. He wanted everything done the right way, the Effie way. He was a burglar-artist.
“I was excited about being with guys like Effie Burke who had all this experience and expertise. Even though they made me the window man and made me carry all the tools all the time, I was working with Effie Burke and one of the premier crews. The money was almost secondary.”
Dolan’s admiration is obvious, and probably well deserved. Effie Burke was the consummate professional, dedicated to putting forth your best, whether your craft was brain surgery, carpentry, or burglary. And it usually paid off. As Dolan says, no one in Effie’s crew ever rolled over and informed on his partners, and none of them were ever caught while pulling a job. Both are remarkable statistics considering the longevity of the crew and the thousands of homes they entered over the years. And they made a lot of money.
“I went all over the country with Effie,” says Dolan. “We did 20 or more trips a year, not counting the ones we would drive to, and we’d be gone a few days to a week at a time. We’d go up to New England, out to the Midwest, and even California a few times a year and did pretty well. The money was good. But Effie showed some discretion. He was smart. If he went to a place, he wouldn’t go back for a while. He’d give it a rest even if he did real well. He didn’t want to overwork a profitable area and alarm the authorities and ruin it like some other crews did. When we weren’t flying somewhe
re, we’d hop in the car and drive. One-nighters were common. A five-hour drive to some destination was nothing. We were on the road all the time—Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York. We worked according to the money we made. If we were short, we’d head out and go where the most affluent towns were located. Maryland was a favorite stop of Effie’s; there were a lot of wealthy towns down there. But Effie wouldn’t go much further south than that. Effie didn’t like the South. He didn’t know the lawyers, and the laws down there were unreal. Hell, a midnight burglary in an unoccupied home down there was a capital offense.”
Years later Dolan found out personally how tough the South could be on intruders when he put together his own crew and traveled below the Mason-Dixon Line to do a few pieces of work. It didn’t take him long to discover the reason behind Effie’s reluctance to work in Dixie.
“Me, Hog Schneeman, and Reds Gorman were grabbed in Virginia,” says Dolan of the excruciating experience. “We were caught with a load of swag in the car. There was jewelry from five or six burglaries, maybe a hundred grand there. Schneeman offered to take the weight because he was the one caught with the swag and tools, but I told him no—we’d hang together and see if we could beat it. I didn’t want him to plead guilty, even though it meant Reds and I could have walked away. Effie had taught us you don’t let a partner burn. If it’s a reasonable bit time-wise, okay: let the guy take the fall, and the crew takes care of the guy’s family. But the Virginia thing was heavy. One guy would get buried doing that. Schneeman was a good guy and great driver, and driving was an art. Sometimes I’d have to drive and it was—oh my god, it was terrible. I’d get lost. I had a very bad sense of direction. I couldn’t find a thing, but Schneeman could drive all night to a distant state he hadn’t ever been to and take you right to where you wanted to go.
“I thought we’d all make bail right away on the Virginia thing, but that’s when the shock came. We were told to forget about getting out of jail. There would be no bail. We were facing a capital charge and could even get the death penalty—life at the very least. I thought to myself, oh, fuck, what did I get myself into this time? We discovered that many states in the South were crazy on the subject of burglary after dark. And that seemed to go double if it was done by burglars from up North. We called back home desperate for help and found out who the best criminal attorney in the state of Virginia was. We hired him right away. His name was Hardaway Marks, and he cost a lot, but he was worth it. He got each of us a sentence of three 10-and three one-year bits running wild—33 years hard labor—and told us we were lucky at that. I couldn’t believe it. Something that would have been 11 and a half to 23 months back home was 33 years in Virginia. I thought I was dead. Marks told us to hang in there; he thought he could get the sentence reduced even further.” (Eventually each of the 10-year sentences was thrown out.)
“So now I’m down in Virginia doing a big bit, and I figure it can’t get any worse than this, but it does. They put me to work on the fuckin’ chain gang. It was unbelievable. It’s hot as hell and I’m the only one of the three of us out there. Hog Schneeman and Reds Gorman are sick and kept inside the jail, but they put me on a gang doing hard labor. Well, one day we’re out in the field working our asses off, and some crazy nigger decides to make a break for the woods. He thought the guard wasn’t looking and he could make it. All of a sudden there’s a big fuckin’ bang. It was like a goddamn cannon exploding. I turn around in time to see this nigger get hit by the blast. He goes airborne, and his whole side is blown the hell out. You can see guts, shit, and blood, all fly out of him in 20 different directions. The guard hit him with buckshot and the guy just exploded. He got totally fucked up.
“I’m standing there in disbelief. I can’t fuckin’ believe it. I then turn back to the guard on horseback and he’s aiming the shotgun right down at my fuckin’ head. I throw my hands up. I’m scared shit he’s now gonna blow me away too.
“‘You Yankee piece of shit,’ he says to me, ‘are you dumb or something?’
“I look around and I’m the only one standing. Everybody else has hit the ground. They’re not only on the ground; they’re trying to bury themselves in the dirt and mud. It’s like they’re worms trying to burrow their way down as far as they can go. So with that shotgun pointed at me I jump down too and start burrowing myself as far down as I can, ’cause the son-of-a-bitch was gonna plug me next. You couldn’t believe what it was like down there. It was in-fuckin’-credible.”
Fortunately for Dolan, episodes like his Virginia debacle were few and far between. Effie Burke had been an exemplary teacher; mistakes of judgment were unacceptable. Burglary was a cerebral exercise constantly testing the wits of the participants. It was the homeowners and cops against the burglars, each trying to get the better of the other. The police were always improving their game. Wealthy homeowners, as well, tried to keep pace with their blue collar adversaries. The sophisticated home alarm systems of the sixties, for example, were supposed to nullify the risk of home burglary. For the K&A burglars, however, such electronic devices presented a minor, temporary inconvenience. The electrical protection systems were quickly overcome; eventually, they offered a slight advantage to the thieves.
“It was like a game of chess with the police and the alarm systems,” says Dolan. “We always had to counter what the cops and the alarm technicians threw at us. We made ’em feel they were playing chess against Bobby Fischer. The alarm companies actually learned from us. They got a real education. So many times we left ’em wondering, ‘How’d they do that?’ when we broke in to a place and didn’t set off any of their state-of-the-art gadgets. When the alarms first came on the scene in the late fifties and early sixties, it only took us a little while to figure them out. The whole system began with a key, so we got ahold of the keys from locksmiths. We already had master keys to most front doors, so now we got ahold of the master keys to the alarm systems. We had flat keys for the front doors and round keys for the alarms. Homeowners thought they were protected, but we had the keys to turn off their alarms. There were these little red and white lights on the alarm systems—red when the system was on and white when it was off. We’d just drive down the street of a wealthy neighborhood and look for the alarm lights next to the front door. A red light meant the owners were probably out for the evening. It also meant they had something in there of value they wanted to protect.
“We’d go back to the house later in the evening, turn off the alarm, and break in. To make sure the police didn’t get suspicious while patrolling the neighborhood, we’d paint the white light red using fingernail polish. This way cops on patrol wouldn’t be surprised to see the alarm turned off but no car in the driveway. It worked every time. We were good, very good. We were professionals. Nobody ever panicked. In fact, we’d keep on working as the homeowners were coming in the house. We knew exactly what we were doing.”
The Effie Gang, as Dolan and his crewmates came to be known, developed a reputation for professionalism, cunning, and standup behavior. In addition, they were serious money-earners. Practically every burglar in Kensington aspired to become a member of Effie Burke’s crew.
“Guys were always trying to coax Effie into giving them a position on the crew,” says Dolan, “but there were so few openings. Years would go by before a new member would join up. When they didn’t get anywhere with him, they’d start working on me and the other guys. They were hoping to get to Effie through us. Guys I didn’t even like would start to make nice to me, buy me drinks, socialize with me, butter me up any way they could in order that I’d put in a good word for them. It almost never worked. I remember Charlie Devlin needed some money and was working Effie, me, and the others for a position on the crew. He was driving us crazy. Effie finally comes up to me and asks, ‘What do you think, Jim? Should we put Devlin to work? Do you think he’d be any good?’
“Charlie was on me like a bride in heat on her wedding night. He was saying, ‘C’mon Jim, you know we been friends. You know I’ve always
taken care of you. We’ve never had a problem. You know I’ll do a good job.’ It was very unlike Charlie to be kissing someone’s ass, but he was desperate to become part of Effie’s operation. He was out to make some money, and he knew it wasn’t unusual for each of us to make $10,000 over the course of a weekend. I finally told Effie I guess we could try it, but it still made me nervous. Devlin wasn’t a burglar in the pure sense. Yeah, he had done a number of burglaries over the years, but he didn’t work the way we did. We knew what we were doing.
“Well, don’t you know it, Effie gives Charlie a shot one night and puts me in charge of him. He tells Devlin, ‘Okay, Charlie, you’re in. We’ll see how it goes. But I want you to take orders from Jimmy. Anything he wants you to do while we’re on the job, I want you to do. You hear me?’ Devlin isn’t too happy with me being his boss, but he was delighted to be working with the premier crew in the area. He was looking for a good payday.
“Well, we’re burglarizing this house one night and I’m driving Devlin crazy. I’m telling him to do this, do that, just driving him nuts with orders. Normally he would have hauled off and tried to hurt me, and you didn’t wanna be hit by Charlie, but I was having some fun with the situation. I was really busting his chops. I made him work the window; he wasn’t happy. He really wanted to do some searching. He wanted to go through the house and find the money and jewelry. That was the exciting part. He was all upset I stuck him as lookout. I could tell he wanted to give me a shot to the head, but I told him, ‘Don’t give me any trouble, Charlie, or I’ll tell Effie. You don’t do what I say and Effie’s gonna hear about it.’ Charlie was going crazy.
“He was going crazy for another reason as well. He couldn’t take the work. As tough as Charlie was, being in somebody else’s house without a gun made him nervous as hell. We were in the home for quite a while that night, and Charlie was getting increasingly edgy, really nervous. He kept on asking, ‘When are we gonna get out of here? Why’s it taking so long? Somebody is gonna spot us.’ He just couldn’t handle the pressure. Charlie would fight a dozen guys. Be in a back alley brawl for hours and be able to take an incredible amount of punishment. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, but burglary took a different kind of balls. It certainly wasn’t for everybody.
Confessions of a Second Story Man Page 13
